Memory and Materiality in Contemporary Art (SECAC 2025)
Cincinnati, OH
Organization: SECAC
Event: SECAC 2025
This panel examines how contemporary artistic practices—including monumental, visual, and performing arts—engage with memory-making processes. By focusing on the interconnection between material experiences and memory, the panel explores how artists embody and reimagine memory while challenging traditional approaches. For instance, activist artists push the boundaries of memory work by challenging conventional notions of archives and historical narratives, positioning artists as critical contributors to understanding how societies remember and forget.
Building on Henri Bergson's concept of memory as a blending of past and present through embodied actions, memory imports the past into the present by interactions between material experiences and virtual objects (Bollmer 2011, 455-56). This framework reveals how artistic works transform intangible memory into tangible experiences resonating across time and space.
The panel also considers how individual practices shape collective and social memories, addressing the fragmented sensibilities of the digital era, marked by simultaneity and multiplicity (Lagerkvist 2018, 5-6). These sensibilities raise questions about how memory functions amid global technological change, and information overload.
A moderated conversation with Q&A and collective discussion, will follow the individual presentations. We invite scholars, artists, and practitioners to examine the intersection of memory, materiality, and practice through diverse theoretical and creative lenses.
https://secacart.org/page/Cincinnati2025
MAZYAR MAHAN
